Thursday, September 16, 2010

Science debunking religion

One of frequent whines of religious people is that science actively "debunks" religion or at least some group of vocal unbelievers apparently participates in that business. Those persons sometimes support in general science (and evolution) in their specific sense of but they just do not like the idea that conclusions of science may contradict their deeply hold beliefs and expose them as false.


I see that idea of support of science and complaints of "debunking" religion by science as quite contradictory. And I wanted explain why it might be so.

All efforts of science can in fact be called "debunking" which is rough name for treating ideas with Ockham razor in one hand and evidence in other. Science shreds all ideas which do not match the evidence collected in the process of scientific inquiry. (Of course 'shredding' is metaphorical and it means that they just land in the science history department). The one which depend on less assumptions have better survival rate.

Religions are ideas which massively contradict (or at best do not adhere to) evidence painstakingly collected during humanity's scientific progress. Thus they are discarded by most serious people in business as obsolete or at best irrelevant.

Some religious persons claim however that there is perfect harmony between ideas of invisible but omnipotent entities. Well, it depends on concrete claims they raise, but largely they either do not provide any evidence for their claims or the existing evidence flatly contradicts their claims. I will just give one example: virgin birth (of Jesus, in case of Christian or Horus in case of Egyptian myths). All we know about the subject biology and conception is that it is impossible to give birth without semen meeting an egg. Such story just at its face is incredible. Without solid evidence in support it is difficult to claim that the story is indeed factually true. From this example you can see what I mean by contradictory claims of both science and religions.

There are consequences of such conflict. Science provides conclusions which render religions vacuous business. Religious people do not like those consequences of science and call it 'debunking' when it tells them that they are wrong all along their whole lives. I empathize for them and understand that it hurts, but their behavior is childish. It is resembling to cursing rain while being outside without umbrella. The rain is wet and cold, surely, cursing helps to channel frustration and forget about pain for a while. But all this does not change the fact that rain exists and ruins our precious outfit. We need to adjust to reality and take precautions (like take umbrella or stay at home). Staying outside and cursing or asking rain to go is not very effective method of dealing with meteorological phenomena and just does not provide much benefit.

No comments:

Post a Comment